1.
When we set out to create ‘The Lost Ones’ we by
no means wanted to create a conventional thriller. We felt the genre of
psychological action had very much been dominated by Hollywood in recent years,
so we felt an independent and fresh take on the genre was much needed.
Therefore, we set out to challenge some of the forms and conventions of typical
media products.
One of the ways that we challenged conventions of media
products was through the addition of cut scenes to the film. This was something
inspired by Oliver Stone’s 1994 film Natural
Born Killers (NBK) in which cut scenes, unrelated to the narrative of the
film are displayed throughout dealing with America’s obsession with fame, crime
and the media. In NBK advertisements for Coca-cola are frequently displayed,
along with scenes of graphic violence (Fig1a & 1b). It was the latter that inspired
some of our cut-scene’s, using themes of destruction (like nuclear explosions
and riots – Fig2) to show the highly unstable and fragile state of the male
protagonists mind. We felt that many major film companies would steer away from
using a device like destructive cut scenes, for fear that it might distract
more passive viewers from the narrative of the story-line, but as we decided to
market our film at an audience who consume media more actively, we felt it
would not be too much of an issue to break this convention.
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| Fig 2 (Nuclear cut scene in The Lost Ones) |
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| Fig 1a (Natural Born Killers violence cut scene) |
Another typical convention of films is the use of
Vladamir Propp’s character theory. Propp suggested that every typical narrative
followed a similar narrative arc, based on folk fairy tales, hinting that all
films must follow a distinct path and involve distinct characters (see ‘Abit about Vladamir Propp and why he’s irrelevant’). We chose to break this
convention, once again because we didn’t really want to create a typical film
for passive viewers. We also felt that due to the limitations of time (the film
had to be only 5 minutes in length), that we would struggle to fit Propp’s
narrative theory in its entirety successfully into our project.
We also broke some typical conventions with relation the
character development. We chose to never reveal the identity of the male
protagonist, leaving him completely anonymous. Typical Hollywood films word
keep away from this approach, as they want the viewer to relate to the
character and know everything about them, however we felt the anonymity
approach worked well as it suggested that the male character’s situation could
easily be applied to anyone. This anonymous approach was inspired by the Cormac
McCarthy novel The Road in which both
protagonists remain anonymous throughout.
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| Fig 1b (Natural Born Killers depiction of the media.) |
Although we did try wherever possible to break
conventions of previous media projects, it was inevitable that we would have to
incorporate some of the typical forms of media products. Whilst I was writing
the script of ‘The Lost Ones’, I made sure to include several metaphorical
devises, many of which had been inspired by major films with major budgets. An
example of this was the use of colour symbolism, a feature definitely prominent
in many successful films. For example we used bright blues and greens to
represent happiness, innocence and nature, as well as using dull greys and dark
blues to represent misery and torment. We also chose to incorporate many
features that we had seen in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense, mainly the lack of interaction between the “ghost”
character and the rest of the world. An example of this from The Sixth Sense is when Bruce Willis
(who does not realize that he is actually dead) tries to pick up the bill for a
meal, but his wife intervenes, not allowing him to move the physical object. We
tried to accomplish something similar in our project, making sure that Violet
never interacted with the world around her, for instance unlike the male protagonist
she never uses an iPod, picks up paper etc.
Our project also follows the typical film conventions
suggested by Tzvetan Todorov. Todorov
suggested that all narratives’ follow a similar structure: Equilibrium,
Disruption, Disruption Fixed. This is definitely true in our work. Our
narrative (although not all of it is shown in the project) states that the male
protagonist is engaged to Violet (Equilibrium), who then dies in an accident
(Disruption). The protagonist then remembers her through a sequence of visual
illusions, before letting her memory finally go (Disruption fixed). Although
Todorov’s theory is not depicted entirely in the film, it is certainly implied.
We also used colour association in the film, (typical of
most films) to help illustrate emotions and mind-frames. For example, at the
start of the film we used blue filters, with played down black and white
mid-tones to create a dull and grainy feel. We felt that this helped reflect
the protagonist’s disturbed and lonely state of mind without Violet in his
life. When the protagonist was imagining Violet, the colours become
substantially brighter, with bright blues reflecting how he is at peace with
his memories, and also suggest that he is at one and isolated with his
memories, almost as if he is submerge under water.
Full details of artistic and creative devises in The Lost Ones can be found by listening
to the audio podcast.
Question Two: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
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| Fig 3 (Sammy CCTV in The Lost Ones) |
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| Fig 4 (The Review) |
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| Fig 5 (Poster) |
1.
Personally, I feel that the combination of our
main project and ancillary texts works
very well, and each individual piece of work compliments the others
nicely. I think this is the case because
after creating the film, we established a theme that ran strongly in the film,
and made sure that we applied this theme efficiently to both of the ancillary
texts. The theme that we developed followed the blue CCTV cut scenes featured
in the film (Fig 3.) We felt that these still frames of Violet, isolated on a
monitor helped reflect the bleak and intimidating nature of the film, and also
nicely hinted at the twist ending, suggesting that the male protagonist is
reliving his past life with Violet, as if he is watching it back on a CCTV
monitor. We made sure that this blue CCTV theme was implemented in both the
review (Fig 4.) and the poster (Fig
5.) completing an advertising campaign
that worked together efficiently. We also felt that the use of the CCTV style
imaging, definitely added intrigue to the film, possibly causing increased buzz
around the film. This was definitely suggested by our audience research, which
the average rating of our poster 5/5 for effectiveness. It could however be
suggested that one major flaw in the design of our poster was that it was too
cryptic and didn’t explain to a viewer at first glance what the film is
actually about, however I think due to the nature of our film project it would
have been inappropriate to have given much of the plot away, as it takes away
from the cryptic nature of the movie. All in all, I think the film and the
ancillary texts complement each other effectively and well.
Question Three: What have you learned from your audience feedback?
1.
I have been very happy with the audience
feedback we have received so far. We asked the Year 12 Media Studies class at
our school to give us their opinions on the film, rating different criteria on
a scale from 1-5 (5 being top, 1 being bottom).
Full details of the audience feedback can be found here, but to summarize, most of the ratings averaged at 4/5 which we were very pleased with.
This successful feedback proved to us that we had successfully made a film that
was appealing to our main target audience (active teenage viewers). One of the areas that was less successful was
the overall clarity of the narrative, however I believe we managed to rectify
this by re-recording the vocals on the film. The clearer dialogue made the
narrative easier to understand and added clarity to the film.
We also posted the video on YouTube, and submitted it to
a worldwide audience. Some of the viewers rated the film, and at the time of
writing the clip has received 2/3 positive feedback and 1/3 negative. This
suggests that the film does not work well with a mass audience, however this is
not to concerning for us as from the start of the project we have wanted to
appeal to a niche audience, which from our specific target audience screening
we have learned that we have done successfully.
Question Four: How did you use new media
technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
1.
We used many professional technologies in the
creation of our media product. For the construction of the film, we used an
Olympus Hybrid camera that shot in 720p high definition. We chose to use a HD
camera, as it is unusual today to see a film created in anything less than
720p, and we wanted our final film to looks as professional as possible. When
we started editing, w e used two main
software packages to edit the movie, Sony Vegas and Adobe Premiere Pro. We
started working with Premiere at the start of the year, as we had used it for
our AS level project and already knew a lot about its layout and design,
however once we got a minute into the film, it started to show up severe
problems. The video preview would begin to lag, and the programme would shut
down up frequently every lesson, losing any unsaved work. After a long time,
trying to get Premiere to run efficiently, we changed to Sony Vegas, and
started editing the film again. We found Vegas to be a lot more streamlined and
easy to use, however some of the effects that we managed to achieve in Premiere
were unavailable. We also used a Tascam DR-05 digital recorder to re-record
some of the dialogue that had become lost due to background noise when filming.
This recorder proved to work very well, creating substantially better quality
audio than the cameras in-built microphone.
For the ancillary tasks, we used two main pieces of
Adobe software, Photoshop and Illustrator. We created the bulk of the poster
and the review in Illustrator and used Photoshop primarily to make slight
tweaks to photos, or to crop images down (a tool that is not included in
Illustrator). It took us quite a while to learn these image manipulation
packages as we had never used anything like it before, however after a few
hours, we begin to find the user interface fairly simple and easy to use.
In the research phase, I used Xbox applications Netflix
and Lovefilm as one of my main sources of research material. I used this
streaming service to gain access to short films (see review of Cashback(2004) that I then reviewed and took
inspiration from. I also used YouTube channel FutureShorts and BBC website BBC
Film Network to watch short films, many of which influenced The Lost Ones.
In the evaluation process, we used Blogger as a catalyst
to record what we had done, what we were doing and what research we had done. I
personally found Blogger particularly nice to use, especially when the
introduced the Beta update that made the site easier to navigate. When we
wanted to share files (like storyboards etc.) we used Cloud storage site
Microsoft Skydrive, and just posted a link on our blog. We also used YouTube to
share video files as we found Blogger’s inbuilt video streaming feature to be
impractical and harder to access.
Full 30 minute evaluation Podcast with Six String Studio available here.
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